Data acquires extractability only through socially constructed relations, not as a natural given

Evidence

But in many other cases a relation has to be constituted in such a way that it enables data to flow in the first place. Once constituted, the seeming naturalness of the relation frames the resulting data as something that can be validly extracted from the flow of life. Without the act of extraction there would be no identifiable item of data and thus no separate right to extract that data. It is the stability of data relations that enables data extraction to seem both valid and beyond challenge. This is another consequence of the basic point already noted, that data is not natural but a resource whose extractive possibilities must themselves be socially constructed, just as physical nature had to be reconfigured so that it could be exploited by capital. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 133

Some forms of data relations—for example, within a corporation that has the residual power to collect data across its activities—are operational and require no additional level of social agreement. But in many other cases a relation has to be constituted in such a way that it enables data to flow in the first place. Once constituted, the seeming naturalness of the relation frames the resulting data as something that can be validly extracted from the flow of life. Without the act of extraction there would be no identifiable item of data and thus no separate right to extract that data. It is the stability of data relations that enables data extraction to seem both valid and beyond challenge. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 133

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the land-as-commodity argument of enclosure and primitive accumulation; a strong point of contact with political economy readings of surveillance capitalism. — connects to: Data colonial extraction persists by converting data relations into durable social relations — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 84; Data does not become a commodity until extraction processes demarcate it — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 472; Meaning arises from interdependence in difference, not from data or content. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 622 (+9 more)
• SEED: Angle: the claim that there is ‘no separate right to extract’ data without the act of extraction as a legal-constructivist challenge to data-property theories.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 133

Broader Connections

• Data is a social by-product, not a natural substance, captured by distant third parties #corroborates (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 287
• Micro-level data relations are rendered commonsensical by extractive rationalities #corroborates (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 297
• Capital is a social relation conferring extractive power, not just machinery #expands (0.75) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 792
• Objects are studied as social relations, not physical things #expands (0.72)
• Objects are only knowable within their network of relations #expands (0.72) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 373